Internet Smackdown: The Amateur vs. the Professional

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Internet Smackdown: The Amateur vs. the Professional

Web 2.0 critic Andrew Keen is taking a lot of flak for his book attacking the internet as a refuge for mediocrity and dilettantism. The truth hurts, I guess.

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture bemoans the rise of amateurism in all spheres of professional life, specifically as facilitated by the internet's long reach. It bemoans a lot of other serious problems raised by something as insidiously intrusive as the web, but we'll confine the focus here to the question of the amateur vs. the professional.

Since bloggers – the most conspicuous of amateurs – are a focus of Keen's views on this subject, the blogosphere is alive with vituperative assaults on his book, his intelligence, even his character. Even the internet's high priest of innovation, Lawrence Lessig, felt compelled to weigh in.

But one of Keen's central arguments – that the internet, by its all-inclusive nature and easy access, opens the door to amateurism-as-authority while at the same time devaluing professional currency – deserves a full airing. Basically, I think he's right to criticize what he calls the "cut and paste" ethic that trivializes scholarship and professional ability, implying that anybody with a little pluck and the right technology can do just as well.

The trouble is, this is not a black-and-white issue. You can't simply discount the valid contribution of an amateur who got lucky or possesses innate ability, so it's hard to sound as definite as Keen does without inviting a "You suck"/"You suck worse" kind of debate. (Which seems to be the level of most online discourse, come to think of it.)

OK, so the internet opens up the avenue of mass communication to everyone. So you get the blogs, be they good, bad or indifferent. You also get sites like YouTube and MySpace that encourage your lame personal video contributions and pathetic searches for friendship. They do that because they've built their business models on the premise that you're a total loser in complete denial of the fact. That, and you have this incredible need to share.

What is the internet, if not a narcissist's dream come true?

But opportunity and desire alone do not professional historians or journalists or pundits make. There's this process known as "learning your craft" and "paying your dues" that all professionals must endure. Sorry, but trolling the web and blogging from your darkened study doesn't qualify as on-the-job training.

Any more than tailoring your news feeder to deliver only the news that interests you makes you an informed person.

I've heard the argument from the so-called Web. 2.0 crowd: What makes the professional any more capable or reliable than a knowledgeable amateur? What makes the amateur any less a reliable source of accurate information? That the 2.0s would ask those questions with a straight face is, in a nutshell, part of the problem.

We could discuss this issue in myriad ways. I'm going to take the amateur vs. professional argument into the arena I know best: journalism.

First, a caveat: Journalism is in trouble as much as it is in flux, and the professionals bear their share of the blame. The mainstream American media, bloated to unimaginable size across the worlds of print, broadcast and cyberspace, is largely under the thumb of corporate interests more concerned with profit than mission. Largely because of this, it can be accused of failing, in varying degrees, in two of its age-old mandates: to inform the people and to watchdog the government.

By "inform the people," I'm not referring to catching you up on Paris Hilton's legal travails, or publishing a long interview with the latest American Idol. I mean telling you what's going on in politics and international affairs and business and sports so you can be an informed and engaged citizen. Paris Hilton makes it to the front page only because today's editors, under the gun to staunch the red ink of falling circulation, think that's what you want to read. Is it? If so, shame on you. But shame on us even more, for letting that cloud our news judgment. And shame on our corporate masters for creating an environment of avarice and fear.

Still, the arguments I've heard – that all these free-ranging bloggers, this army of internet "journalists," unencumbered by corporate interests or the need to please shareholders or appease influential politicians, will save the day – are fatuous.

Whatever problems facing the business today, I've never doubted the ability of the professional journalist to 1.) get the story and 2.) get it right, even if that means fixing some mistakes now and then. I would not trust an amateur journalist to do either.

The amateur is not equipped to attack a story in the same way. The amateur lacks both the tradecraft (locating sources, cultivating them, chasing down the facts, evaluating them, writing clearly and concisely, etc.) and the professional detachment that keeps a reporter at arm's length from the subject. More prosaically, the amateur is also unlikely to devote the time needed to developing a complicated story, since, by definition, an amateur is unpaid, or at least poorly paid.

What about the person who is "there"? What if you're standing on the steps of the Capitol, with your cell-phone camera, when Sen. Johnny Walker, three sheets to the wind, pitches head first down the marble stairs and breaks his neck? Your grainy, low-res photo makes it onto the nightly news and the front page of The New York Times. You even lean over to hear him say, with his dying breath, "Rosebud." Are you a reporter? A photojournalist?

No, you're an eyewitness who happened to be toting a camera. The eyewitness has been around for years, far longer than the cell-phone camera or the internet. Your contribution to the resulting news story may be enormous but you're not a reporter, anymore than someone applying first aid at an accident scene is a doctor. You're a source, someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

For your account to have any meaning beyond a picture and a five-second sound bite, a professional reporter needs to fill in the gaps. Where had the unfortunate Sen. Walker been drinking, and with whom? Did he have a history with alcohol (i.e., was he a lush?) or was this out of character? What critical votes will be affected by Sen. Walker's sudden absence? Who, or what, is Rosebud?

One assumption you can make about bloggers is that the reason they're blogging something in the first place is that they've got a vested interest in the subject and they're going to spin it their way. In a sense they have to, because one of blogging's tenets is that "attitude" is all-important. Blogging is all about subjectivity, which certainly has an important role in the marketplace of ideas. It might make blogs interesting and fun to read. It might even make them informative. It does not make them journalism.

Bloggers who scour the web looking for evidence to buttress their agendas, then post their findings as some kind of news analysis, aren't reporters, either. They're bloggers. No shame in that. Just don't confuse blogging with journalism.

Keen doesn't. He's getting his butt kicked for it in some circles but love him or hate him, he should be thanked for stirring the debate.